Something To Ponder​A blog by Nancy Zimmerman

How do you introduce yourself? I have recently been attempting to determine how to introduce myself on my new radio show, A Look at the Bright Side. It is more difficult than I realized. As I wrestled with this for an opening show, I thought about how I have identified during different times in my life. My identities have been fluid. I would imagine this is the same for most people.

Do you identify as someone’s son or daughter in your early years? That is usually our first identity. Then, as we grow older, we will identify as someone’s friend or relative, “Meet Sam, my friend from school.” Then we are introduced as a boyfriend or girlfriend, then later a spouse, then the circle comes to a close as we are no longer someone’s son or daughter, but rather someone’s mother or father. ​There are other ways we identify, on a more personal level. We are linked to our ethnicity, our physical attributes, our jobs, etc. But who are we really? We are a sum total of all of our identities, but we are also more than that. When we look in the mirror, we assess what we see and we ourselves place a value on that view. We identify with the filtered messages we have received about all of the identities we have been given. As an example. If we were deemed to be a valuable son or daughter, that message also becomes part of the identity we carry. If we were deemed to be less than acceptable, that also becomes part of the identity. So, in addition to the actual view we are confronted with, we have a “value view” identity based on the “value” we have been given by others. Now, I am lucky in this respect, because in this introduction I am trying to frame, I am doing so for a radio show. It is a view that will not include sight in the mind of anyone. Based on the identity I present them with, they will paint their own picture of me physically. This is , I believe, one reason why the Social Media craze is so popular. Our identities are no longer based on what we were in the past, or what a few pictures look like, but rather our identity becomes the result of the emotions we create through our posts. I know the whiners as well as the sincere people on my list of friends. I hope they learn to know me through mine. It is with these thoughts that I draw this pondering to an end. I realize that we all create our own identities day by day, experience by experience. It is with this knowledge that we can create our desired projection to the world around us and the people in it.